Selections From The Attic Orators - Antiphon Andocides Lysias Isocrates Isaeus

Selections from the Attic Orators – Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus (1957) by R. C. Jebb – Macmillan

ISBN: None
Condition: Good
Published: 1957
Offered by: Crappy Old Books

There was a time when winning an argument required rather more than shouting loudly, interrupting one’s opponent or accusing everybody else of being an idiot. In ancient Athens, the successful public speaker was expected to possess intelligence, eloquence, rhetorical skill and preferably sufficient knowledge of the law to avoid being condemned to death before lunchtime.

Welcome to Selections from the Attic Orators, R. C. Jebb’s scholarly examination of five remarkable figures from the golden age of Greek public speaking, presented in this 1957 Macmillan edition.

Here we encounter Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates and Isaeus, gentlemen who made their reputations through the ancient art of persuading other people that their particular version of events was considerably more convincing than anybody else’s.

And what an extraordinary world they inhabited.

Classical Athens was a society in which political influence, legal survival and personal reputation frequently depended upon one’s ability to address an audience. There were no microphones, no television interviews, no public relations consultants and certainly no carefully managed social media campaigns. If you wished to defend yourself against accusations of wrongdoing, you might actually have to stand before your fellow citizens and explain yourself.

Antiphon specialised in the formidable business of forensic argument. Andocides navigated the treacherous waters of Athenian political controversy. Lysias became celebrated for his remarkably clear and persuasive legal speeches, while Isocrates helped establish rhetoric as an essential element of education. Isaeus, meanwhile, demonstrated that inheritance disputes were quite capable of producing elaborate arguments long before the invention of modern probate solicitors.

Together, these orators offer a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual, political and legal culture of ancient Greece, where democracy was an exhilarating experiment and public disagreement occasionally carried considerably more serious consequences than an unfavourable newspaper editorial.

Jebb, one of the great British classical scholars of the nineteenth century, brings formidable academic understanding to this collection, illuminating the development of Greek prose and the rhetorical traditions that would influence European education for centuries.

Condition: Good. A respectable 1957 Macmillan hardback displaying the expected signs of age, handling and previous ownership. A scholarly survivor from an era when classical Greek was considered a perfectly reasonable subject of study rather than an eccentric hobby requiring explanation.

Naturally, there is no ISBN. Ancient Greek orators managed perfectly well without numerical identification systems, although they would doubtless have delivered magnificent speeches concerning their necessity.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where classical scholarship is appreciated, rhetorical excess is positively encouraged, and all arguments concerning the asking price must be submitted in the original Attic dialect.

A fascinating collectible for students of classical civilisation, ancient Greek literature, rhetoric, political history and the enduring human determination to win arguments.

Proof that while civilisation has developed enormously since ancient Athens, the art of talking one’s way out of trouble remains reassuringly unchanged.

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